Obesity – what can you do about the national epidemic?
- By M Smith
- Published 22 Oct 2007
It has been recently reported in the press about the state of the nation and the dramatic increases in the amount of weight adults and children are weighing. If you take a look whilst walking around any an average town, you can not fail to notice several people who are either fat, very fat, or obese.
Regardless of what our personal view of size, or image, one thing is agreed upon – carrying too much weight is unhealthy. It can lead to several health problems, including diabetes, heart disease and strokes to mention only a few of the typical effects of being too overweight.
The NHS is already under pressure to cope with its current demands, what will happen if the obesity epidemic is as bad as it is forecasted to be in the future; will patients be selected on the basis of their weight for operations, rather than their need for surgery?
One thing which I feel argues this selection basis is that the more overweight you are the more strain your vital organs will be under during major surgery and a general antiseptic may well be too much for an obese person’s body to cope with as they are already under considerable strain. According to the BBC news website over 30,000 death
s a year are caused by obesity in England alone, and the overall cost to the country is estimated at up to £7.4 billion a year and this is set to increase.
But why are so many people overweight? There are several reasons suggested; the change in work life to more jobs being desk based and not very active, the increase in fast food and ready meals, people working longer hours and more likely to get home late and collapse on the sofa and not doing anything athletic and eat late at night, more chocolate and read meals being available.
But the truth of it all boils down to one point; people are consuming more calories than they’re burning off, resulting in weight gain and this balance needs to tip the other way. People need to be realistic that there is no easy fix, keeping trim takes effort and being aware of how much food is being consumed in relation to the amount of calories being burned off in order to stay an average weight.
I’m not saying it’s easy – but people have to take responsibility for their own personal weight and not just think because others around them are overweight it’s ok and perfectly acceptable, we all only have one body and it’s our duty to take care of it as best as we can, and that includes not becoming obese.
Regardless of what our personal view of size, or image, one thing is agreed upon – carrying too much weight is unhealthy. It can lead to several health problems, including diabetes, heart disease and strokes to mention only a few of the typical effects of being too overweight.
The NHS is already under pressure to cope with its current demands, what will happen if the obesity epidemic is as bad as it is forecasted to be in the future; will patients be selected on the basis of their weight for operations, rather than their need for surgery?
One thing which I feel argues this selection basis is that the more overweight you are the more strain your vital organs will be under during major surgery and a general antiseptic may well be too much for an obese person’s body to cope with as they are already under considerable strain. According to the BBC news website over 30,000 death
But why are so many people overweight? There are several reasons suggested; the change in work life to more jobs being desk based and not very active, the increase in fast food and ready meals, people working longer hours and more likely to get home late and collapse on the sofa and not doing anything athletic and eat late at night, more chocolate and read meals being available.
But the truth of it all boils down to one point; people are consuming more calories than they’re burning off, resulting in weight gain and this balance needs to tip the other way. People need to be realistic that there is no easy fix, keeping trim takes effort and being aware of how much food is being consumed in relation to the amount of calories being burned off in order to stay an average weight.
I’m not saying it’s easy – but people have to take responsibility for their own personal weight and not just think because others around them are overweight it’s ok and perfectly acceptable, we all only have one body and it’s our duty to take care of it as best as we can, and that includes not becoming obese.